I’m starting today with a laugh. As a mom of four wild boys, you learn to pick your battles. If it’s broken, bleeding, or on fire, you know it’s fight time.

You also learn when to worry and when to not worry.
And you learn to sleep when you can. Wherever you can. However you can.

Which brings me to this…

It was a long night. One of the longest of my life.

I take that back. It’s been a long two weeks. It’s been an even longer winter – but I’ll save that for another post.

It started with the stomach bug. And progressed to a cold. Then a cough. Then slight fevers. Then a call from the wild boys’ dad that two had double ear infections and one had “near pneumonia.” Then a frantic trip to the doc after a 5 a.m. wake up and 102 fever with my bigger ginger baby.

Then Marshall started hurling again to celebrate his 2 month birthday.

And he began to cough. Just a little dry hack. Infrequent at first. No alarming whistling, no high fever, no loss of appetite. Yet.

But in a heart baby, any sign of sickness (however slight) makes a mama want to hit the panic switch.

Or kick herself for that one (or hundredth) time one of the boys may have sneezed in the same room as Marshall. A quick email to our great doc in Boston reassured me there was little more I could do to keep Marshall as well as he could be. So I’ll have to withhold the kicking myself.

For now.

And wait.
And watch.

And try harder to not worry.

Which explains last nights’ sleeplessness. The baby slept pretty o.k. for him and only awoke twice.

I, however, did not sleep well. At. All.

So please if you’ve got a good, strong, ridiculously healthy thought to share, please extend it to our little miracle. And the wild boys. And anyone else who needs one on this gray Monday…